A suicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital south of Baghdad today as US troops were handing out food to children, killing 30 people and injuring about 40, including four Americans.

Increased attacks by insurgents over the past two days have killed at least 44 Iraqis, including 12 labourers – five of them brothers – who were gunned down at a construction site.

A suicide car bomber killed two Iraqis and wounded five today in an attack on a police patrol in an area of Baghdad where insurgents had kidnapped and murdered a defence lawyer in Saddam Hussein’s trial last week, police said.

A roadside bomb hit a US patrol of Humvees in southern Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding six, an official said today.

NEW suicide bombings killed at least 22 people in the Baghdad area yesterday, while relatives struggled to identify charred bodies from a fiery suicide attack near a Shi’ite mosque in Musayyib that killed more than 90 people.

ESCORTED by Iraqi forces, US Marines entered the centre of Fallujah yesterday for the first time since the end of the bloody siege last month.

US aircraft destroyed a Baghdad office of a radical Shiite cleric, killing two people and injuring six, his followers said today.

US marines began joint patrols with Iraqi security forces today in the city of Fallujah under the agreement that ended the almost month-long siege of the city.

Two US soldiers were killed when an explosion levelled part of a Baghdad building as they searched it for suspected production of “chemical munitions”.

Two American soldiers died today when a Baghdad building they were searching for “chemical” munitions blew up.

A powerful car bomb destroyed a five-story Iraqi hotel housing foreigners in central Baghdad tonight, killing 27 people and leaving a jagged crater just days before the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

A REBEL convoy was greeted with jubilation when it rolled in to the capital yesterday as US troops hit the streets to help quell the violence following the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Two terror attacks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad today left at least 11 people dead including a Spanish military attaché who was assassinated.

An apparent suicide car bomber hit a police station in northeast Baghdad today and one report said at least seven people died.

A roadside bomb blasted a US convoy in north Baghdad on Monday, killing an American soldier and his Iraqi interpreter, the military reported, and the top American commander announced plans to establish an Iraqi militia to patrol the country.

US Marine reconnaissance units are investigating more aggressively in the southern Afghan desert.

As UN talks on the future of Afghanistan began in Germany, US Marines expanded their base of operations in southern Afghanistan, sending out heavily armed patrols.